Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Posted by Iyouboushi on July - 12 - 2013 Comments Off on I suffer from PET

It has taken me a long time to write this all up but I finally felt the need to. I suffer from an ear problem called Patulous Eustachian Tube (or PET).

Before you can really understand what PET is, you need to know a little about how the human ear works. To do a quick summary/refresher, there’s three parts to your ear: outer, middle and inner. The outer ear is the part we see/can get to with a Q-tip. The ear drum sits at the end of the outer ear and separates it from the middle ear. The middle ear has the three tiny bones and the Eustachian tube. The inner ear is where the vibrations from the middle ear bones are converted into the sounds we recognize. The Eustachian tube is a very tiny tube that links the nasopharynx to the middle ear. It is normally closed but opens periodically to equalize pressure in the middle ear. It has to do this to prevent damage from pressure changes. If the Eustachian Tube doesn’t open, it creates a negative pressure which can draw fluid out of surrounding cells which can lead to hearing loss and infection.

If you’ve ever had an ear infection that was full of fluid it is most likely because your Eustachian Tube wasn’t opening properly—due to an infection, a cold, blockage, whatever. Patients who have Patulous Eustachian Tube suffer from the opposite problem of this. In PET, the Eustachian Tube doesn’t close properly. When this occurs, the patient experiences autophony, the hearing of self-generated sounds. These sounds, such as one’s own breathing, voice, and heartbeat, vibrate directly onto the ear drum and can create a “bucket on the head” effect. Often these sounds can be louder than the sounds outside the body. As you may imagine, this makes it very difficult to hold conversations or enjoy simple things (like music).

The condition is pretty rare—to a point where some doctors don’t even know about it or bother to check for it—and seems to be completely random. That is to say it can come and go at pretty much any time in your life and isn’t genetic like some conditions. Because of this it’s hard for doctors to really diagnose it properly. Often times we’re diagnosed with Eustachian Tube Dysfunction and told to take decongestants or with allergies and prescribed antihistamines (both of which seem to make things much worse).

A full cure does not seem to really exist at the moment, though there is speculation that the body can repair the problem itself if the ET is closed long enough (but hasn’t been proven). There are several different treatments (often times surgery is involved) to try and alleviate the symptoms.

For most of us that suffer from this the best thing we can do is try to close the ET ourselves. This is done, usually, by holding our noses and trying to blow/suck in air as if we were breathing hard. Sometimes this works and closes the ET for a small amount of time. Other times it doesn’t. There is a danger to doing this too much or too hard in that it can potentially cause damage to the ear drums by pulling them in to the middle ear area.

I just felt I should type this up because of how rare it is and how misunderstood it is. I am constantly trying to close the ET myself and I know I must look like a complete weirdo when I do (I can only imagine what people think of me—probably think I have a coke addition or something). It’s also part of the reason why I’m so silent most of the time. It’s very hard to hold a conversation when experiencing autophony.

This post is just meant to bring some awareness to the world about this condition. I hope one day mine either goes away or a cheaper cure is found

Posted by Iyouboushi on April - 5 - 2012 Comments Off on Call This Number! Leave Me a Message!

CALL THIS NUMBER
(206) 337-8887

WHAT IS THIS?
The number listed above is a voicemail-only box that I have set up for random people to call and leave me messages.

IS THIS SOME KIND OF TRICK?
No! This is NOT some trick. This number is VOICE MAIL ONLY! It doesn’t call some random person in a random state. This isn’t some kind of prank being played on a pledge or some other nonsense like that. What happens is that when you call and leave a message the service sends me an email containing the message. It doesn’t save your number. I have no idea who leaves the messages (unless you specifically say your name). You’re anonymous. Say whatever you want! Make it hilarious, sing a song, or just tell me off. Whatever!

AM I GOING TO BE CHARGED IF I CALL THIS NUMBER?
The short answer to this is… maybe. It all depends on your service plans. Most local (U.S.) non-prepaid services have unlimited nights (and possibly weekends). If you call during that time then no, you shouldn’t get charged. But check your service plan before you call it. I’m not responsible if you have to pay a few cents to leave a message. International callers will most likely be charged, sadly. I don’t know if you can use something like Google Voice to call it for free as I’ve never messed with that service.

WHY AM I DOING THIS?
I’m interested in what people have to say to a total stranger. Consider it an experiment. Okay, truthfully? I’m bored and am looking for a new interesting way to brighten up my day. The last time I set this service up I got some pretty interesting calls. Everything from a song about cats to a call from New Zealand. It was pretty awesome. I’m hoping to get some good calls like that again.

Then we saw a few movies that piqued our interest but are not necessarily “I HAVE TO SEE IT IN THEATERS” type movies, including a psychological thriller named Unknown starring Liam Neeson. But what really surprised both of us is the fact they made a Justin Bieber movie.

Last night the storyline for that movie read: A look at Justin Bieber’s early life, his rise to fame, and behind the scenes of his 2010 tour. Wait, what? His EARLY LIFE!? He’s 15! What kind of drama could he possibly have in his “early life?” Well, I kind of imagined some of it would go like this:

“From within the womb Justin Bieber knew he was destined to become one of the most hated singers on the planet. But trouble arose in daycare when Suzie Sue refused to share her cookie with Bieber. ”

Well, whatever. This year the major overarching theme seems to be aliens in movies. We saw many movies where the synopsis mentioned something about aliens. Heck, even Thor could be considered an alien due to his backstory. Overall though, there’s going to be a handful of really good movies to see this year and a whole lot of bad ones that I pray I never get to see.

What do you think? If you’ve browsed through the upcoming movies for the year leave a comment and let me know what movies you’re excited to see.

Posted by Iyouboushi on September - 29 - 2010 Comments Off on The Bite to End All Bites

Something bit me. I don’t know what it was or how it did so, but something bit me on my chest. I know when I went to bed at midnight I didn’t have it but at 5 am I woke up with seething pain and feeling completely awful. I managed to basically push it aside and figured it’d go away on its own after a few hours and went back to sleep.

Woke up five hours later and my stomach was churning so bad (and I eventually threw up). My head was spinning and the bite mark was still extremely sore, though the size of it had gone down considerably.

Around 11 am Bri was online looking up bite marks and we couldn’t find anything that matched what I had. However, every site we went to told us that the person bitten was feeling nauseous and sick they needed to go to the doctor. So I decided to just suck it up and go.

Sat in the waiting room for over two hours before I was finally seen. The cost of just BEING there (no tests, just walking through the door and signing in)? $137. Anyway, just when I thought I couldn’t take it any more I was finally seen and the doctor basically told me that without knowing exactly what it was that bit me there wasn’t much they could do for it. She prescribed some anti-nausea pills to help cure that part of it at least.

I also told her about my on-going ear problem (297 days now) and she checked. She said that she COULD see fluid trapped behind the ear drum but there was no infection. She said that the best thing to do for that was to take an anti-histamine. Now, I had tried benadryl before and told her that but she says you have to take anti-histamines for a month (sometimes more) before they really do you any good. I was only taking it a day or two at a time and usually only at night (since it would knock me out). She gave me a prescription for a good antihistamine that is supposedly non-drowsy. She also gave me a small sample of, but not a full script of, a prescription nose spray to use and said to try both together. With luck the anti-histamines will dry my ears out and the nose spray will help clear up my sinuses and help the Eustachian tubes drain.

But here I am now, like 8 hours later from the doctor, and I don’t really feel much better. The anti-nausea stuff makes me so drowsy that when I took it I basically passed out for five hours without even really knowing it. I woke up and still felt awful though. I’m about to go pass out again here shortly.

Whatever bit me needs to die. It ruined my day, ruined Bri’s day, and made me miss work (and it’s not like I get so many hours or get paid so well that I can afford to just skip a day). Thankfully, though, my boss is really understanding and my coworkers are awesome (both are willing to do whatever it takes to help me) so it got settled.

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